Several western style food and beverage stores have decide to join the growing competition over Taiwan's moon-cake market before next month's Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the first full moon of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, or Oct. 1 this year on the solar calendar.
The holiday is also called "mooncake festival" after the traditional dessert.
Eyeing the holiday snack market, coffee shops such as Starbucks and IS coffee as well as fast food store Kentucky Fried Chicken Corp Taiwan are trying to attract consumers with home-made moon cakes this year.
"Taiwan is the only place in the world where customers can bite into a Starbuck's Coffee-flavored moon cake," said Chung Tsong-chin (仲崇經), marketing manager of Starbucks, speaking to Chinese-language media last week. He said this year's "hazelnut latte" and "white mocha chocolate" flavor moon cakes were created by Starbucks Taiwan and produced by its parent company, the President Group (統一企業).
Another local coffee chain, IS coffee, is taking advantage of its alliance with the Ding-Hao Bakery (
Kentucky Fried Chicken has chosen moon-shaped egg tarts to show their holiday spirit.
"The full moon during Mid-Autumn Festival is a symbol of family reunions, and our circular egg tarts express the same meaning," said Chen Chia-hsiang (
Other mooncake shapes will be seen at Pacific Sogo Department Store and Breeze Mall. Before its official opening on Oct. 12, Breeze Mall will offer "Betty Boop" moon cakes. Sogo will feature Japanese cartoon character Pom Pom Purin (
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by